Marc Chagall Painting: WHITE CRUCIFIXION (1938) -- story about loan to Dallas, TX from Chicago Art Institute

Story excerpt from National Catholic Reporter feature (print and online) by Menahem Wecker (May 10, 2014): Marc Chagall's 1938 painting "White Crucifixion" was part of the trove migrating south during Chicago Art Institute's seven-month renovation of its modern wing. Writing last February in The Dallas Morning News, Michael Granberry suggested that the painting deserves its own study. "It's telling that Chagall, a Russian-born Jewish artist, painted it in the same year as Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' that offered a grim foreshadowing of the Holocaust," he wrote. But both Granberry and the museum may have buried the lede, or eliminated it altogether. With the Chagall painting and 100 other works from the Art Institute's modern European painting and sculpture section now back home in Chicago, it's important to note that the work, which depicts a decidedly Jewish Jesus on the cross, is also reportedly Pope Francis' favorite painting. To be fair, site-wide searches of the websites of the archdioceses of Boston, Chicago, Washington, Galveston-Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco yield no mention of the painting. And in several conversations with visitors during the member preview of the restored section at the Art Institute, not a single person knew about the papal preference for the Chagall painting. The Art Institute's renovation, according to a press release, responds to "wear and tear" on its third-floor galleries from the millions of visitors who have come since the modern wing opened in 2009. The newly opened galleries feature repainted and refinished walls, floors, podiums and cases, as well as improvements to the "energy-efficient light harvesting system for the galleries" that will "ensure consistent light levels across all rooms." .. Under newly consistent light and amid the slick renovation, Chagall's Jesus wears a sort of turban on his head, and instead of a loincloth he dons a Jewish prayer shawl, or a tallit. Surrounding the central crucifixion scene, a synagogue burns to the right, rabbis fly in the air above (where one might expect angels), and a pogrom ensues to the left. Above Jesus' head, on the titulus, Chagall writes the Latin acronym "INRI" and, in jumbled Hebrew and Aramaic, "Jesus the Nazarene, king of the Jews." . . .